Becareful with that, in Malaysia programming will not be introduced until
you go college/university(got a feeling it is the same for other country),
it is not even teached fully in form 6, if at all. So even we know
programming, we need a cert, in comes the question by who, what syllabus
etc. Because public uni tends to be from Form 6, where as most in private
college, tend to continue from diploma or foundation which might not cover
programming.
Unless there is change, that again is another rant, this time by Boh in the
mailing list not long ago.
On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 5:39 PM, Chen Ruo Fei <crf2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I disagree with the statement that CS don't need math, but I think CS
> courses do not help students much in their future career because they are
> teaching it in the wrong (traditional) way.
>
> First of all, I think programming skill should be the foundation before
> entering CS. Everyone must have at least intermediary skills on programming
> before entering CS and are expected to understand advanced programming
> practices by themselves. If the students have little to no knowledge on
> programming, they must be sent to foundation courses or get a diploma first.
> Programming is a level-0 course and prerequisite of CS, it is the basics for
> everything in CS but outside the teaching scope of CS.
>
> Secondly, CS should teach the mathematical theories behind the various CS
> subjects and let the students apply the algorithms with their existing
> advanced programming skills. It's relationship with math is the same as
> applied physics with math. Students are expected to understand the proof
> behind the formulas but are not expected to construct new proofs - that's
> the job for mathematician and theoretical CS.
>
> If you only learn programming but not CS, you can only construct very high
> level programs where other true hackers have built the foundations for you.
> Yes, programming frameworks today are extremely powerful and allows
> even mediocre programmers to write powerful programs without understanding
> what's going on behind the scene, but somebody still has to write and
> maintain the frameworks and libraries, and that needs a lot of CS and math
> skills.
>
> There are so many subjects out there that require deep understanding in
> math and CS, just to name a few: information retrieval, image processing,
> artificial intelligence, compiler design, formal semantics, operating
> systems, database systems, concurrency, graph algorithms, distributed
> computing, and so on. These are the subjects that really makes todays
> technologies possible, even Google, Facebook, GCC, and Linux are built on
> top of the many theories in CS.
>
> Nevertheless, it is true that the market for jobs requiring CS is
> shrinking, especially for places like Malaysia. I feel that today's
> programmers are split into two camps: one camp that make use of CS to build
> various libraries and frameworks, and the other camp that makes use of the
> libraries and frameworks with little understanding on what's going on
> behind. The market for non-CS camp programmers is expanding in rapid speed,
> thanks to today's technologies such as Android, iPhone, HTML5, and cloud
> computing. It is kinda sad for me to see the younger generation of
> prospective CS students having too much attention focused on developing cool
> (insert-buzzword)-Apps, rather that the CS behind that makes it possible.
> Now I'm not saying that developing apps is not important, but I would prefer
> programmers to also look at the CS behind the apps - the programs that
> power Android, the browsers, the cloud, and so on.
>
> Also, technology is constantly changing. The buzzwords today might fade
> away quickly in few years time and replaced by new buzzwords, but the maths
> and theories behind the technologies will not change much. So a programmer
> who has solid CS knowledge can easily adapt the technologies that based on
> new theories, while the non-CS programmers will always need to wait for the
> CS programmers to rebuild new frameworks and make use of the new APIs.
>
> Anyway, regardless of the importance of CS, it's kinda sad that in Malaysia
> there is almost no job opportunity for CS programmers AFAIK. Most Malaysian
> companies that I seen focus on using existing frameworks to build software
> that matter to businesses. There is nothing wrong with doing so, my point is
> just that it has very little to do with CS. If I know any Malaysia company
> that actually makes use of (non-theoretical) CS, I would probably jump ship
> to work for that company. :P
>
> I think the problem of CS getting further away from programmers is also
> similar to the engineering field. Most people with engineering degree today
> do not work as a true engineer. Well their job titles still write
> "engineer", but most of them don't really do the kind of fundamental
> engineering, such as designing machines or building megastructures, that
> make our modern lives possible. Most engineers also make use of the works of
> a small number of "core" engineers who really make use of the engineering
> knowledge. So while deeper engineering knowledge still matters today, it
> matter less for majority of the engineers today. (disclaimer: I have little
> understanding on what engineers really do, that's just my observation from
> my friends graduating from engineering, and I may be wrong)
>
> just my two cents. Btw even though I attended some CS courses, most of my
> CS knowledge come from self teaching.
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 3:07 PM, Raja Iskandar Shah <
> rajaiskand...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ahaks...
>>
>> for a mathematician a simpler answer is n*(n+1)/2
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:57 PM, darXness darXness <darxl...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> math n CS...
>>> IMHO,without math,programming cant go to the next
>>> part.if,else,while,and most of the programming part is derived from
>>> math.and we actually learn that in school.but under Math,not
>>> programming.slowly,we implement in our program.without we knowing,we
>>> actually doint math.just pick some of the code:
>>>
>>> while(i = 0;i<5;i++){
>>> i;
>>> }
>>> see?we actually doing plus operation there.:D
>>> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:26 PM, E A Faisal <eafai...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > I'm not formally trained on CS. All my programming knowledge is self
>>> taught.
>>> > So this is my opinion.
>>> >
>>> > Programming is not solely an art. It's both art and science. I
>>> experienced
>>> > countless of times where knowing maths would be extremely useful. While
>>> it's
>>> > true that you can program something without any understanding of math
>>> but I
>>> > learned the hard way that to implement something efficiently and of
>>> high
>>> > quality you still need maths. I once created a middleware that helped
>>> to
>>> > bridge between a system with Hylafax which I needed to write a
>>> scheduler to
>>> > poll fax status from Hylafax. My first implementation was straight
>>> forward,
>>> > without any thought of mathematical model. It worked but it ate up
>>> resources
>>> > needlessly. Though it didn't give any problem but it's not elegant
>>> because
>>> > it wasted on computing resource which I might need in the future.
>>> Eventually
>>> > I managed to find a mathematical model to implement a good scheduler -
>>> yes!
>>> > math to the rescue.
>>> >
>>> > Still not buying on the importance of math? Consider yourself doing
>>> > programming and need to choose a data structure. Without good math
>>> > understanding how can you decide which data structure would be best on
>>> a
>>> > given program? Want to analyse your newly and cool algorithm? Who you
>>> gonna
>>> > call? Math, of course. Even when you code bussiness app, your business
>>> logic
>>> > is basically a representation of mathematical model.
>>> >
>>> > Not to discourage new programmer, you can still code with knowing math
>>> in
>>> > depth. But, IMHO as you progress into a more competent programmer you
>>> better
>>> > catch up with math again. It certainly helps. Math has helped me, I'm
>>> sure
>>> > it's useful to others too.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Harisfazillah Jamel
>>> > <linuxmalay...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> We really need math in CS. They way Computer engineers and software
>>> >> developers think are like mathematician. All are numbers.
>>> >>
>>> >> We codes in 1 and 0. if then else. all can be calculate and formula
>>> >> can be created.
>>> >>
>>> >> and one thing.
>>> >>
>>> >> Computer programming is an art :)
>>> >>
>>> >> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 11:40 AM, sweemeng ng <swees...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >> > http://ocirs.com/2011/03/11/computer-science-education-and-math/
>>> >> > based on this article. Actually I kinda agree with the author. It
>>> >> > depends on
>>> >> > the goal, if aim for research YES, if for industry, maybe no
>>> >> > what you guys think
>>> >>
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